Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Spy Network Pilfered Classified Docs From Indian Government and Others

A spy network targeting government networks in India and other countries has been pilfering highly classified and other sensitive documents related to missile systems, the movement of military forces and relations among countries, according to a report released Tuesday.

It also grabbed nearly a year’s worth of personal correspondence from the Dalai Lama’s office, even after reports published last year indicated that the Dalai Lama’s network had been compromised in what is believed to be a separate breach.

The researchers say the spying is an example of a sophisticated shift that has occurred in malware networks from “what were once primarily simple to increasingly complex, adaptive systems spread across redundant services and platforms” and from ones that primarily focused on exploitation for criminal purposes to ones that are focused on “political, military, and intelligence-focused espionage.”

The spynet, dubbed Shadow Network, was discovered by a group of computer-security researchers in Canada and the United States who have been monitoring the espionage for at least eight months and watched as the spies siphoned classified and other restricted documents from the Indian Defense Ministry and other computer networks.